Mumbai: Music Composer AR Rahman is not the first Indian to win a Grammy Award.
In the 51-year history of the Grammy Awards, only three Indians have had the honour of being Grammy Award winners and that too only when they collaborated with other western musicians.
Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar was the first Indian musician to bag a Grammy way back in 1967 for his performance West Meets East with violinist Yehudi Menuhin in the Best Chamber Music Performance category.
He followed it up with a second trophy in 1972 when The Concert For Bangladesh featuring him, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann was named Album Of The Year.
Shankar got third time lucky in 2001 when he won a Grammy for his album Full Circle - Carnegie Hall 2000 in the Best World Music Album category.
Incidentally The Best World Music category that was instituted in 1991 also won Tabla wizard Zakir Hussain his first Grammy in 1992 for his album Planet Drum.
Last year after a gap of 18 years Hussain won the Grammy yet again in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album Global Drum Project along with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju and Giovanni Hidalgo.
The album also featured other Indian names like Taufiq Qureshi on percussion and vocals, Niladri Kumar on Sitar and Dilshad Khan on the Sarangi.
Lastly Vishwa Mohan Bhatt who has the distinction of creating the Mohan Veena, won the Grammy along with guitar guru Ry Cooder for A Meeting by the River in the World Music Album section in 1994.
In the past many distinguished Indian musicians have been nominated for the Grammys like Asha Bhosle, Louise Banks, Anoushka Shankar, Debashish Bhattacharya, Lakshmi Shankar and Bickram Ghosh to name a few, but the honour has evaded them so far.
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